The present invention is in the field of Internet services and business models, pertains more particularly to apparatus, methods, and models for providing a service tracking geographic location of clients of the system, and providing information to the clients based on the tracked location.
The well-known Internet and the subset of the Internet known as the World Wide Web (WWW) is arguably the greatest present net repository and source of information available to persons enabled by suitable equipment to and connect to myriad Internet servers and download information. Enabling equipment for end users include all computerized machines capable of establishing an Internet connection and of asserting addresses known as Universal Resource Locators (URLs) to connect to individual servers and pages on servers (Web pages), and of communicating in the language of the Internet. Such enabling equipment may be broadly termed Internet appliances, and include in aggregate large Internet-connected servers (which may be enabled to browse and connect to other Internet servers), desk-top personal computers, which typically connect to the Internet through telephone lines and Internet Service providers (ISPs), Web TVs, computerized set-top boxes typically using cable services for connection, and a wide variety of portable computerized units (portable computers).
The latter category of portable computers is of primary interest in the present invention, and includes an increasingly diverse set of equipment taking a variety of names. Among these are laptop computers, palmtop computers, hand-held computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal organizers, cellular telephones, and many more. To fall into the class of Internet appliances it is only required that such portable units be enabled to connect somehow to the Internet backbone, and be able to browse the Internet through some level of executable software, which ability may be enhanced or largely provided by Internet-connected proxy machines.
The Internet and Internet-related enterprise services, as of the time of the present patent application, have been growing at a very great rate, and one important reason for emergence of many new services is the sheer volume and resulting granularity of the Internet. A person accessing the Internet can be reasonably assured that the information he or she might seek is out there somewhere. Finding it, however can be another matter entirely.
A broad variety of services have been developed to help individuals locate information on the Web, among them quite sophisticated browser software executable on the end-user""s Internet appliances, powerful search engines available on proxy servers to browse for subscribers and other clients, and indexing and listing services which attempt to track and cross-reference Internet information sources. For the purposes of the present specification, a client is a person who uses a service, while a subscriber is a client who registers and/or pays for using a service Even with enormous effort going into new and better indexing and searching services, partly because of the rate of growth of sources and end users as well, there has been but little improvement in ability to quickly find and easily access information on the Web. Browsing the Internet can still be a daunting task, especially for the relatively uninitiated client. The present inventors have recognized, therefore, a need to narrowly focus information services to provide highly specialized information specific to needs of groups of individual clients, and automatically or semi-automatically provided to such clients.
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention a system for delivering position-related information from a data repository to a user is provided, comprising a computerized appliance for receiving and reporting the position-related information to the user; a data repository remote from the appliance for storing information related to the position of the computerized appliance - a system for determining the position of the appliance; and a wireless communication link between the data repository and the appliance. The position-determining system tracks the position of the appliance, and in that information is selected and provided to the appliance from the data repository based on the determined position.
In some embodiments the position-determining system is a GPS receiver at the appliance determining the position of the appliance on the Earth""s surface, and the appliance comprises a cellular telephone link to the Internet for establishing communication with an Internet server having access to the data repository. Also in some embodiments the Internet server selects information from the data repository based on position and dynamic changes in position of the appliance, as determined by the server from reported position relative to time.
In some embodiments the position-determining system is constrained to an indoor facility, including a wireless communication link to the appliance, and the appliance comprise s a cellular telephone link to the Internet for establishing communication with an Internet server having access to the data repository.
In another aspect of the invention a method for delivering position-related information from a data repository to a user is provided, comprising steps of (a) storing information cross-referenced to geographic position in a data repository; (b) determining position of a computerized appliance by a position-determining system cooperating with the appliance; and (c) retrieving information from the data repository and sending the retrieved information to the appliance, based at least in part on the position of the appliance.
In some embodiments of this method there is a further step (d) for reporting the information sent to the appliance to the user. In preferred embodiments step (b) is periodically repeated, followed by steps (c) and (d). In some embodiments, in step (a) the position-related information is stored in a data repository accessible to an Internet-connected server, the position-determining system in step (b) is a global satellite positioning (GPS) system implemented in the appliance, and in step (c) information is retrieved by the Internet-connected server and relayed to the appliance via a cellular telephone enabled Internet link. Also in some embodiments, in step (b) the position-determining system is constrained to an indoor facility communicating on a local wireless link with the appliance. In some of these embodiments the data repository is associated with the indoor facility, and data is retrieved and sent to the appliance on the wireless link. In others the positioning system is local, and the information is stored and retrieved at an Internet service.
In embodiments of the invention, described in enabling detail below, for the first time a system is provided for tourists and other travelers, that is capable of presenting information to the travelers based on the traveler""s position, as determined by a portable device.